


War of the Angels

by merriell



Series: Chyerti [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angels, Demons, Fantasy, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-02 12:12:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriell/pseuds/merriell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For centuries, the demons and angels have maintained their truce for long, although it did not prevent them from passive-agressively attacking each other in the earth where their barriers lay. For centuries, too, demons bury their vulture claws and glass teeth in humans, binding them to hell, while the angels busy themselves with their own affair.</p><p>Until the ones between started appearing, breaking their truce, breaking two thousands years of peace. And the war begins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intro

_Chyerti_ , they call us. _Demon bitches, demon bastards. Your kind deserves hell_.

We, for centuries, have laughed when these words came out of their mouth, and we will always be laughing. We’re evil, right, in their eyes; because we don’t do things that are right. We don’t stop listening when people call us this. Neither do we accept and acknowledge it. We think it’s ironic. Rather than those angels, who only care about themselves, who stabbed each other from behind with their flaming swords and hope that they can trust their poor souls to each other, those other angels they call “ _siblings_ ”, we are not hypocrites. We are not liars who said that we will treasure people’s lives and took it right after.

No, we say it outright if we do; yet always, they cower and accept it.

Angels these days, arguing about territories and whose the worthiest, yet they turn the blind eye on humans who crawl like maggots in the earth, refusing to help—or even _look_!—at the frail word that is so entrusted to the most worthy being of all, humans. We may have old beefs, we _chyerti_ and those entity protected by their frail bones and flesh and skin, but we help them. We don’t turn a blind eye. We watch, and we help when we’re needed.

Demons watch. We watch, with our shining yellow eyes, with our painted lips, with our glass-made teeth, and we never took our eyes away. We are not jealous, we are not fond of them, but we _pity_ them, most of all. The so-called superior race that is supposed to lead their big, breathing world, end up burning it with their self-inflicted hellfire, and who’s the superior race _now_?

Pity; if we help, we do it for pity, and out of boredom. We breathe terrible things, the stench of death and rotting flesh are like flowers to us, but seeing the same thing over and over and over again makes you bored and frustrated. So once in a while, we descend. We took human faces, voices, names (souls, every once n a while), and we stand beside them. When we are called, we listen. When we whisper, they listen. It’s our own mutualism.

When you call us, we come. For a deal. For an exchange. For power, for wealth, for love, or for lost souls scattering on the hard ground, slipping away from grasps.

Because the world is a puppet show, but none of control the strings nor write the script. We, _chyerti_ , creatures of the depth, only stand as instruments and audiences, ready to clap and help, while the humans act out their terrible improvisations.


	2. Prologue - Miserable

**_New York, 2001  
_** _[_ Belias – Grantaire _]_

A pale red smoke floated from a dark alley at the most deserted street of New York. A man of Japanese descent leaned on the orange brick wall at the entrance of the alley, black glasses covering his eyes even though there was still four years before the sunrise, smoking slim cigarettes whose smoke contrasted with the red one from the alley. He took a deep sigh.

To some he was known as Belias. In this city though, he was called Grantaire. He named himself after a book Leviathan had given him to read through 1943, where he was stuck to watch a little girl in a red house in the middle of Germany. He read it, occasionally falling asleep every five paragraphs, but it was Leviathan’s gift to him and it would be folly to not read it, just in case she asked about it.

If he had known that audiobooks would be invented, almost sixty years later, he wouldn’t have bothered.

The red smoke stopped with sound of dry heaving. Belias turned his high slightly to the left following the sound. Ash fell off the lit part of his cigarette. It was Lucky Strikes, although he had no preference, but it was a gift from Carreau the last time he had seen the guy before the Cold War ended. Every single time he lit one, another one would appear inside the carton. Yet he lit it all through the punk phase, through the disco.

Belias didn’t like to waste gifts from other people.

“Turn away,” someone mumbled. He complied, pointedly looking at the store across the street. It was a small DVD store with the word ‘ _Cinema_ ’ from yellow neon lights at the window, and from beyond the cheesy blockbuster film posters below the neon, you could see the clerk sleeping on the counter table, the television still showing Zodiac in it. When Belias scoffed, a white trail of smoke blew from between his lips.

Amusement creased in the corner of thin lips. “Done with your business, already, Maddy? That was quick.”

A small teenager, no older than sixteen, walked out of the alley on cue with his words. She was short and her hair fell away to her back, the color of expensive honey, artificial light brown; she flicked her hair away from her shoulder with a flick of her finger. “You surely make it like I’m excreting,” she said,

He made an excessive gasp of surprise and ignored the sharpness in the yellow irises of his companion. “I would _hate_ to offend you, my prince,” again, a mock mannerism.

“Spare me the nonsense,” she harshly scowled at him. From the outer corner of her right eyelid, there was a short horizontal line to her eyebrow, but halfway it turned to the inside of her eyelid. She was a prince, a boy prince; usually she’d prefer the form of a dark-skinned boy, but lately she loved to dress in a girl with pale skin and thick thighs. It would be trouble to offend her, but Belias was Leviathan’s, and it would meant more trouble if she dared to touch him wrong.

“So how was the flesh?”

“Delicious. Would’ve preferred if it was bitterer, though.”

“You royals and your odd taste.”

She waved the insult off. “It must not be my taste that is at fault when a Lieutenant who belongs to our Mistress Leviathan fail to find a human that isn’t suitable for my taste. It should be a child’s play.”

A cat fled away from the alley where Belias walked out, fleeing as quick as its little leg could bring it. The fur was black, but there was specks of red in its body. Beside the prince, Belias rolled his eyes. He never understood royals’ taste for gore. It was messy to clean it, but luckily that was the little demons’ jobs, not his. It felt like it had been a long time since Leviathan picked him up and gave him a name.

They started to make their way through the street, the trace of rain still wetting the pavements, dancing with their every step—Belias with his sandals, the prince with her platform shoes. Their heads were far from each other, even with the thick soles of the prince’s platform shoes, but under the bright light of the street lights, she was as tall as him.

“The human, he said something of a hilarity.”

“What is it?”

“He said that chyerti hadn’t been eating humans for thousands years.”

Both of them laughed in unison. The prince raised her hand to cover her crimson lips as she laughed, and in her nails there were traces of blood. Their laughter rang loudly in the air, piercing the oxygen around them like knives. The terrible sounds carried across the streets, even rousing the clerk from the CD store to consciousness. The clerk watched them from behind the glass, watching them as they disappeared into the night, only leaving their laughter behind them.

“They’re so cocky just because we agreed to play with them!”

“They think they’re so invisible!”

“Unbelievable, human’s pride! Just because you help them for a slight bit, they decided that we’ve lost taste of them!”

“Humans are hilarious. I love them.”

The clerk would remember the two figures that disappeared into the night. But when the television interviewed him the next morning for the murder of a political figure at the alley across of him, he’d mention nothing of them. He would remember those two figures years later, when the news showed the footage of an angel and a chyerti fighting each other with flaming swords in the middle of Chicago.

And he would recognize one of them, the one who wore sandals in his feet.


	3. Chapter One: The First One

Chapter One

The First One  
[ _Jerahmeel – Serafine_ ]

 

**Jakarta, 1998**

In the top of the building, there was an angel sitting with one foot dangling from the edge. Her wings weren’t outstretched, and even if it was, you couldn’t recognize if it was real or not. Your eyes could only see it on particular angles, where the light of the sun seeped through it—faint lines of transparent feathers in the empty air. Angel’s wings. One particular angel’s wings.

Her name was Serafine. It wasn’t always Serafine. At the age where the kingdoms were still standing tall, she was Marian, a lady. At the age way before that, she was Gefion, some kind of goddess. But the truth was she only had one name since the beginning of the world, and it was Jerahmeel.

She adopted the name when Adolf Hitler was kicked out of art school. Gabriel, the only Archangels who still spoke to her when she was Above for the last two centuries, gave it to her over discussions about the deals the demons had been giving out to human. Of course, the angels had always known of these particular deals—it was hard to not to notice the large scale of spiritual power all over the Earth, but they’ve been too busy dealing with each other’s long lives to care even a little about human’s short lives. There were always more important matters to be cautious at.

Jerahmeel remembered the exact words Gabriel had said, “ _Why don’t you stay out of this and scout for me a little, my sibling? It would be interesting, would it_?”

She’d done it for him ever since.

The last time she’d been on Indonesia they were having flag ceremony at the garden of their new president; now, sixty years later, there were riots overflowing the streets. People who were promised protection and people who were supposed to protect them, clashed their hard, hungry eyes over each other’s in the street. Some of them was family. Some of them were strangers. But every single one of them was human.

There was no sign of sulfur in the air. The one who poured the oil was human, and so was the one who threw away the lit matches. The demons—chyerti, as the people had been calling _them_ these days—had no part of this. Human did all of those things by themselves, deconstructing, destroying peace; the twitch that appeared on the edge of her lips were something of a disgust, but it was a must for angels to not show any single of emotion.

The last time Jerahmeel of Archaengel had showed any emotion (to be fair, it was without her consent; like a full jug of water, it had spilled out of her so harshly through the cracks that she could not hold the pieces together with her fingers), the closest of her sibling had left Above for Below. It had been two centuries since the last time Jerahmeel had seen that one.

Just at her thought flew to _that one_ , she’d sniffed something in the air that roused her attention. The eyes that once followed the riots below her was distracted by two running figures not far from there.

The wind blew the curls of her brown hair in the hair and the sun light fell on her darkened skin as she moved from the edge of the roof, plunging to below, but landing near the figures that had attracted her attention. They were running away from lines of ruined stores, and Jerahmeel could see people chasing them on their tails, persistent and hateful.

She was not _usually_ kind to human; for her their lives were too short to be saved. But the smell intrigued her. The smell was something Gabriel and her have talked about, years ago. Jerahmeel put herself between the chaser and the one being chased. She must’ve looked weird, appearing out of nowhere like that. But she didn’t really care much about being secretive.

Jerahmeel was beautiful. She had kohl on her light gray eyes, dark skin and lean body. Her curls were also beautiful, it was tied up high on her head. Her smile was there even though it was empty. And then she waved her hand, just before the chasers’ bodies touched hers, and they fell down with loud _thuds_ , hitting the ground quite hard for them to forget what they were really doing for a moment.

Heels turned to see the one chased. One was already running away, not bothering to look back, but the other one, the one who reeked faintly of sulfur but also of wet soil, turned at her and looked her straight on her light gray eyes.

A smile was given, but not exchanged.

The boy stopped in his tracks, dazed. He could not be older than eight. He wasn’t a chyerti. But he reeked of sulfur. There was no mistaking on that; when you spent a little bit of time below, no amount of washing could fade the sulfur away. Not when they like it so much.

“What’s your name?” Jerahmeel singsonged, on what she figured a language he understood.

He looked back at his running mother, gulping down fear to his throat, eyes darting to the fallen figures of the chasers on her feet. Slightly, she’d wanted him to feel fear, but there was a mirror of intrigue on his dark eyes. He was interested. He wasn’t scared. His voice was firm when he answered, “Alif. Alif Danuarta.”

“ _Alif_!” the mother, finally caught up with her son’s absence from behind her, called.

Alif Danuarta, the boy with chyerti’s blood on his veins, looked back again at Jerahmeel, a question in his throat. He didn’t want to follow his mother, it was obvious. His feet were stuck in the ground.

“I’m Serafine,” Jerahmeel moved her hand, a gesture for him to go. He complied after a second of hesitation, still too attracted to her eyes to just obey at once. Before the echoes of her voice could not be heard by him, she added with a ting of playfulness, “We’ll meet again, don’t you worry.”

Once he’d went away, she pulled out a necklace from between her lips, leaving the figures that were slowly gaining their consciousness. The necklace buzzed with what human called heavenly orchestra for a second before a familiar voice picked up, calm but with some kind of childishness.

“Sibling?”

“I found it,” she said to Gabriel, “I found the evidence.”

Gabriel was silent for a second before he answered again, obviously pleased. “Ooh, really? Excellent, Jerahmeel. I thought you will take up more time, but you did found it after all, my lovely sibling. I would be in your debt.”

“Yes, you will, for pushing me to this god-forsaken place for more than seventy years, my sibling.”

“What’s the boy?”

“Half-chyerti. His name is Alif Danuarta, and he is of Chinese descent.” Her hand rose to run through her curls. “I had to use some otherworldly means to get to him, I’m sure you’ve noticed already, but I want to give you a heads-up just in case our sibling Michael decided to give you hell for it.”

“Our sibling would be too pissed on demons to be annoyed of our little ruse, darling.”

“Michael loves to gives you _to_ hell no matter what situation you’re in, Gab.”

“You really spent too much time on Earth, my dearest Jem,” she could hear the smile on Gabriel’s voice, and it was unnecessary to guess something like that; Gabriel was always smiling like he had all the cards in the world, when he did smile. “Be careful, one might mistake you as a chyerti.”

Jerahmeel had no knowledge of the gesture to roll eyes at that kind of comment, but if she did, she would’ve done it. The smell of sulfur had disappeared from the air when she finally answered, in annoyance.

“See you on the Court, Gabriel.”

**Author's Note:**

> http://graybirds.tumblr.com/tagged/book:%20war%20of%20the%20angels the cast, for clearer understanding. yes, both demons and angels usually can change their appearance at will, but most of them have favorites faces, so :D


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